


The Great Unknown

by SBK



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: All that nice stuff, Cancer, Depends on how u look at jt, Hospitals, IT - Freeform, M/M, Sad, Sad Ending, Sick sick sick, Vomit, Written to "turn back", sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7991956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBK/pseuds/SBK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance says thank you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Death is the scariest word in the dictionary because it's the  _ truest  _ unknown. Death is forbidden, an untouchable source that steals from us, taking lives and the everything in between. I'm not scared, that's what I tell Keith and Pidge, because they're afraid. I don't want them to worry, because truly I'm fine. Maybe not. 

 

But isn't that what makes cancer so unique? You either fight or you die trying, but it's like walking on a tightrope. Or maybe someone is for you, and if they mess up in the slightest, you're the one that dies. The medication and the treatments, they're what owns you. I've decided to quit being so scared of everything, and with shaky breaths, I smile my brightest and tell my funniest jokes and - and you should see Keith’s face. He scoffs, tells me I'm stupid. 

 

How long will this all last? Shiro’s gruff stare, dad like in every definition, Pidge's awkward speeches about how I can't dare die from something so pitiful. That cancer could never stand a chance against someone as loud, and  _ stupid  _ as me. Or the doctors sticking things in me, and the machine beeping becoming nothing but a way of life. The constant scrapes of squeaky shoes and wheels as they hurry, to save my life. To save me.  _ A good doctor,  _ that's what they say I have. 

 

I'm tired. I'd rather sleep, and food? It makes me feel sick. I throw up everytime I eat it, I throw up everytime I  _ look  _ at it. My hair is gone, they shaved every last strand off. My eyes are sunken in, and I look like the definition of a zombie. I want to believe them, I want to believe that I'll get  _ better,  _ but it's  _ cancer.  _ Cancer. A giant, huge black mass that consumes everything it touches, and it got me. 

 

I smile at Keith when he walks in, and his face tenses. My skin is burned, radiation was our only option. It hurts, I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to punch something, but I just don't have enough  _ energy.  _ I feel nothing, void of life entirely. Like my soul is being drank away bit by bit, and for what? For life? Cancer's already taken half of it, why try anymore? What's the  _ damn  _ point?! 

 

“Hey Keith.” I whisper, because Shiro and Pidge are leaned up against one another asleep. Their faces outlined by the machinery around me, the light that shines like the sun above my head. Keith sits on a stool kept on my right side, two juices in his hand, and he offers one to me.  _ I'll throw up, Keith.  _ “Thanks.” I simply hold it in my hand, staring off as Keith slurps at his, the sucking of the straw making a fine distraction from the throbbing pain. Oh God it  _ hurts,  _ it  _ burns _ . I'm  _ dying.  _

 

I can't hold it back anymore, I sob. It's loud, I drop the juice, it spills all over the floor. I grab at something, something firm, it's Keith’s hand. So steady, but it hurts so bad and all I can do is cry.  _ Please, please make it stop,  _ I scream, I'm tired of this place. The whites, greens, browns, the warm colors. The hospital colors… the  _ death  _ colors. This whole place just  _ stinks  _ of death. Of emptiness, of loneliness, and only a small percent of happiness. For that one guy that just got out of leg surgery and can walk again, or that girl hit by a car and is now alive. Laughing with her friends. 

 

The machine goes off, a lot of people are talking, but I'm underwater tying to hear. I don't want to let go of Keith’s hand, but I have to because they're wheeling me away.  _ Please, please kill me.  _

  
  


\--- 

  
  


“Hey Hunk.” It's been awhile since he's come, but he's definitely my best friend. He's someone I can tell everything to, but lately he's been too sad to come. I like to think it's because I'm also his best friend, and something about seeing friends hooked up and on the very border of life has to be terrifying.

 

“Lance- listen, they said that you're going to make it through this. So, you gotta believe it yourself.” Hunk sets his hand on my shoulder, and he smiles such a wide smile, it makes me sick. 

 

“What?”  _ No, I'm dead. Don't you see it Hunk? The treatment isn't working. Quit lying to me.  _ “What're you talking about, dude?” I grin a little, “I haven't seen anyone so worried-” 

 

“You said you wanted to die last night when they were taking you.”  _ Oh.  _

 

“Oh.” My chest itches and burns, blistered skin, from the radiation. It hurts. I want to scratch at it, and my clothes rub against it in all the wrong ways. Lately it's been getting colder and colder, I'm more and more tired, all I want to do is sleep. At least when I sleep I don't feel anything. “I was just jokin’, because without me you'd all crash and burn. No offense.”  

 

“ _ Lance. _ ” 

 

“What?” 

 

“Don't…  _ die. _ ” Hunk looks away, clearing his throat as his leg bounces up and down. Anxious. “Please.”

 

“Not in a million years, Hunk.” I do my best to smile, my cheeks hurt, we've been doing this for  _ years.  _ Chemo, radiation, pills, needles, hallucinations, more pills, hospitals, doctors, scrubs, even more pills, ambulances, helicopters, lungs being overflowed with liquid, machines, bigger pills, tubes going down throats, vomit, crying,  _ pain,  _ even  _ bigger  _ pills. I don't want this anymore, maybe it's just time. Time for me to go. To die. To be without pain, because it all hurts so much. 

 

I smile wider. 

 

“Never, I'll never die Hunk.” 

  
  


\---

  
  


They're saying something, but it's so peaceful all of a sudden. I have Keith’s hand in mine, and maybe I should tell him how I  _ feel.  _ I love the guy, after all this time he's always been there for me. Everyone has. But if I say something, it might happen. 

 

Hunk is crying. Begging.  _ You said never.  _

 

I did, didn't I? But sleep is so… tempting, and with my happiest laugh yet, I say  _ thank you.  _ Because God, the pain was so unbearable, but with them? It was that much easier. The pills were hard to swallow, but with their jokes they became nothing but a temporary laugh stopper. The needles piercing my skin? A bug bite. I say  _ thank you  _ because even if this was inevitable, even if my dying was written as my destiny in  _ permanent marker.  _ I'm happy.  

 

I say  _ thank you,  _ because others have died and I won't be alone. I've never been alone. I say  _ thank you,  _ because my heart is no longer throbbing with every breath, I say  _ thank you  _ because for sixteen years… 

  
I've never been happier. 


	2. Good End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm happy.

When I wake up, it’s almost confusing. Hadn’t I just died? I hear a beep somewhere near by, and the sobs of what sounds like my mother. She always was a big crybaby, but that’s just fine. Anyone would be a big crybaby if they found out their son was inches from death multiple times. My vision clears, and I’m staring at a tile covered ceiling. Somewhere a clock ticks away the day, the hours I have left probably. When I’m finally able to focus on anything, Keith’s face is the first one I see. His hands are curled around two juices. There’s tears streaming down his usually stoic face, and all I can do is stare silently. 

 

It hurts, the bandages that are wrapped around my body all ache. Like they’re trying to push into me and snap in half, though I don’t. I instead just lie there, and then I lift a hand and grab Keith’s knee. 

 

“Hey buddy.” I mutter, all hazy like. I must be on a million and on ineffective pain killers. It doesn’t matter, because maybe the placebo effect is real and as long as I pretend the pain killers work I won’t feel anything. Keith’s head turns, and he looks at me with wide eyes. It’s his turn to drop the juices, orange spilling out over the white floor. 

 

“Lance- Jesus Christ-” Keith doesn’t know what to say, but both his arms wind up grabbing at my right. The one with the hand on his knee, and he looks so desperate to say something. Or he did until Hunk comes bounding to life from the great oblivion, snapping two arms to reach out and hug me, and for a millisecond I feel a natural smile curling across my face. 

 

“Hey- hey Hunk. I said never didn’t I?” I couldn’t help but grin, and my burned and scarred body didn’t hurt so bad anymore. I could really make it through this, I could definitely. No matter what happened, I can make it through this because I have huge idiots on my side.  

 

I’ll never forget what I felt two years ago, on the verge of death and just begging the ol’ magical sky fairy to cast me into darkness. I’ll never forget the overwhelming sense of  _ joy  _ I had for being granted the chance to live. To see Hunk smile so wide, chanting never over and over again. To see Keith scoff, cough into his fist, and say to never do that again because we’d already had one too many bonding moments. 

  
I’ll never forget two years ago when I had beat _cancer_ , and it was all thanks to my friends and family after all. 


	3. Bad End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm heartbroken.

Rain. It poured, causing the grass to become damp and muddy. Ruining all the nice dress shoes everyone had worn for the funeral. For Lance, because Lance had died, he had left us all behind to clean up a painful mess in his stead. I cared, because Lance was the one person that got under my skin. The one person I couldn’t admit my feelings for so wishy washy. I had wanted to wait until he beat cancer, but I lacked the nerve. I’ll never forget the way Hunk screamed, or the way Pidge begged God to not take another family member from them. The way Shiro had screamed about losing another teammate unfairly. I had been quiet, hands grasping onto Lance as he flatlined, as he gave us a real bright smile. One that counteracted everything I ever knew about Lance. 

 

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Lance was overwhelmingly happy for the pain, the suffering to be over. Lance would cry, sob well into the night. I’d find him curled in on himself, gripping at the sheets as gross sobs were brought from a sore and scratchy throat. I’d get him juice, and it never once had ever been drank. Instead, it’d sit there and spoil through the hours while Lance sobbed. 

 

Sometimes Lance sobbed with words, asking God to just get rid of this pain or kill him. Lance by know means even believed in God, and neither had I. But this whole thing felt surreal, and maybe if God had been real he could’ve lived. Lance, Lance could be throwing snow all winter and laughing in the middle of a test at school over something painfully stupid. 

 

I’d asked what Lance was afraid of one night, when he was wailing -- _practically screaming because the pain meds didn’t fucking WORK._

 

Lance had said he was scared of pain, and it dawned on me why. 

 

So watching them lower Lance’s casket down into the earth, muddy and all, it had a calming effect and equally the opposite. I wanted to run over, force their hands off the casket -- off of Lance. I wanted to shout and scream and tell them that Lance WASN’T dead. Because it’s Lance, and that moron said never. At the same time, I wanted to be happy that Lance wasn’t afraid anymore. That he wasn’t suffering anymore, that he didn’t have to worry if he was going to live or die anymore. 

  
So I wept silently, mentally torn with how I should feel about this. Grateful? Pissed off? It’s been two years and I still don’t know, and I still haven’t stopped coming to his grave to leave roses. Why? Because it’s been two years and I’m still helplessly in love with the guy I could never share my feelings to. 

**Author's Note:**

> R.I.P


End file.
